The half-island anti-paradise of Haiti is unlikely to achieve peace under the watch of the UN:
The gangs, both political and drug related, have been growing stronger. The 8,000 UN peacekeepers, and a smaller number of police, are unable to control the streets. The drug gangs like this, as it makes it easier to use Haiti for drug smuggling operations.
Of course, actually achieving something is not what the UN is best at doing:
The UN developed a pretty slick routine for peacekeeping. In most cases, their peacekeepers came in after the fighting was over and peace was breaking out anyway. This was because a major problem with the UN was that they were very reluctant to get involved in any fighting ("peacemaking"), even if such action would save many lives. There were any number of bureaucratic maneuvers the UN could employ, without even bothering the members for a vote, to avoid a possibly dangerous peacekeeping situation. There is a practical, or at least political, reason for this. Many UN members are tyrannies, who regularly kill their own people in large numbers. If the UN should suddenly get active about taking care of situations where thugs are killing innocent civilians, many UN members would be highly qualified targets. Thus the UN peacekeepers must be very peaceful, even if atrocities are committed in the vicinity of the peacekeepers.
Once the UN peacekeepers are in the field, a major concern is minimizing bad news getting out about misbehavior among the peacekeepers. The UN pays a rate that is below what professional troops from the West get, but above what professional and conscript armies in less affluent nations get. As a result, the UN takes what it can get, usually from less affluent nations. Many contributing nations are not keen to send their best troops, so the ones who show up for peacekeeping are a mixed bag. Some of them are poorly trained, led and disciplined. These guys get into trouble, with women, with looting and with stealing from the UN. Officials from the UN prefer to keep all the embezzlement to themselves, as that makes it harder for the media to get hard evidence.
Given this record and outlook, the suicide of the UN commander on Haiti is not good:
The Brazilian commander of U.N. peacekeepers in Haiti was found dead on the balcony of his hotel room Saturday in an apparent suicide, authorities said, a blow to the 9,000-strong force and efforts to restore democracy in Haiti.
Our objective is really just to keep the island quiet so refugees won't come ashore in Florida as it has been for more than a decade. So without our serious attention, the failures there are really inevitable:
The multinational force is attempting to restore democracy to this impoverished Caribbean island nation two years after a rebellion overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Peacekeepers from more than 40 countries have struggled to control gangs that still hold sway in sprawling slums.
The security situation has been unraveling in past weeks, with a rash of kidnappings hitting the capital. International election workers, journalists and ordinary Haitians have been among the victims.
Bacellar's death also came days after officials postponed national elections for the fourth time, blaming security problems and delays in distributing voter registration cards and setting up polling stations. The elections had been planned for Jan. 8. No new date has been set and it was not immediately clear what effect Bacellar's death would have on a new election timetable.
Crime, unwillingness to confront the bad guys, violence, and postponed elections are not the best record. But the press release corps does a bang up job so nobody is really aware of the ongoing failure. But does the general's suicide speak of more going wrong that he as a professional soldier was ashamed of?
Keep paying attention to what's going on there. Mere military failure is not terribly unusual for a UN mission. Who would blame this commander for that? But there may be more given the UN's sorry history in the field. If the UN's press releases about Haiti start getting really good, be suspicious.
